Efficient Spam Classification by Appropriate Feature Selection PDF

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EFFICIENT SPAM CLASSIFICATION BY APPROPRIATE FEATURE

SELECTION
Prajakta Ozarkar, Dr. Manasi Patwardhan

Vishwakarma Institute of Technology, Pune.
ABSTRACT
Spam is a key problem in electronic communication, including large-scale email

systems and the growing number of blogs. Currently a lot of research work is performed on
automatic detection of spam emails using classification techniques such as SVM, NB, MLP,
KNN, ID3, J48, RandomTree, etc. For spam dataset it is possible to have large number of
training instances. Based on this fact, we have made use of Random Forest and Partial
Decision Trees algorithm to classify spam vs non-spam emails. These algorithms
outperformed the previously implemented algorithms in terms of accuracy and time
complexity. As a preprocessing step we have used feature selection methods such as
Chisquare, Information gain, Gain ratio, Symmetrical uncertainty, Relief, OneR and
Correlation. This allowed us to select subset of relevant, non redundant and most contributing
features to have an added benefit in terms of improvisation in accuracy and reduced time
complexity.
INTRODUCTION
In this paper we have studied previous approaches used for classifying spam and non
spam emails by using distinct classification algorithms. We have also studied the distinct
features extracted for classifier training and the feature selection algorithms applied to get rid
of irrelevant features and selecting the most contributing features. After studying the current
feature selection and classification approaches, we have applied two new classification
techniques viz. Random forests and Partial decision trees along with distinct feature selection
algorithms.
R.Parimala, et.al. [1] presents a new FS (Feature Selection) technique which is guided
by Fselector Package. They have used nine feature selection techniques such as Correlation
based feature selection, Chisquare, Entropy, Information Gain,Gain Ratio, Mutual
Information, Symmetrical Uncertainty, OneR, Relief and five classification algorithms such
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International Journal of Computer Engineering and Technology (IJCET), ISSN 0976-
as Linear Discriminant Analysis, Random Forest, Rpart, Naïve Bayes and Support Vector
Machine on spambase dataset. In their evaluation, the results show that filter methods CFS, Chi-
squared, GR, ReliefF, SU, IG, and oneR enables the classifiers to achieve the highest increase in
classification accuracy. They conclude that the implemented FS can improve the accuracy of
Support vector machine classifiers by performing FS.
In the paper by R. Kishore Kumar, et.al.[2] spam dataset is analyzed using Tanagra data
mining tool. Initially, feature construction and feature selection is done to extract the relevant
features by using Fisher filtering, ReliefF, Runs Filtering, Step disc. Then classification
algorithms such as C4.5, C-PLS, C-RT, CS-CRT, CS-MC4, CS-SVC, ID, K-NN LDA, Log Reg
TRIRLS, Multilayer Perceptron, Multilogical Logistic Regression, Naïve Bayes Continuous,
PLS-DA, PLS-LDA, Rnd Tree and SVM are applied over spambase dataset and cross validation
is done for each of these classifiers. They conclude Fisher filtering and Runs filtering feature
selection algorithms performs better for many classifiers. The Rnd tree classification algorithm
with the relevant features extracted by fisher filtering produces more than 99% accuracy in spam
detection.
W.A. Awad,et.al.[3] reviews machine learning methods Bayesian classification, k-NN,
ANNs, SVMs, Artificial immune system and Rough sets on the SpamAssassin spam corpus.
They conclude Naïve bayes method has the highest precision among the six algorithms while the
k-nearest neighbor has the worst precision percentage. Also, the rough sets method has a very
competitive percentage.
In the work by V.Christina, et.al.[4] employs supervised machine learning techniques
namely C4.5 Decision tree classifier, Multilayer perceptron and Naïve Bayes classifier. Five
features of an e-mail: all (A), header (H), body (B), subject (S), and body with subject (B+S), are
used to evaluate the performance of four machine learning algorithms. The training dataset, spam
and legitimate message corpus is generated from the mails that they have received from their
institute mail server for a period of six months. They conclude Multilayer Perceptron classifier
outperforms other classifiers and the false positive rate is also very low compared to other
algorithms.
Rafiqul Islam,et.al.[5] have presented an effective and efficient email classification
technique based on data filtering method. In their testing they have introduced an innovative
filtering technique using instance selection method (ISM) to reduce the pointless data instances
from training model and then classify the test data. In their model, tokenization and domain
specific feature selection methods are used for feature extraction. The behavioral features are also
included for improving performance, especially for reducing false positive (FP) problems. The
behavioral features include the frequency of sending/receiving emails, email attachment, type of
attachment, size of attachment and length of the email. In their experiment, they have tested five
base classifiers Naive Bayes, SVM, IB1, Decision Table and Random Forest on 6 different
datasets. They also have tested adaptive boosting (AdaboostM1) as meta-classifier on top of base
classifiers. They have achieved overall classification accuracy above 97%.
A comparative analysis is performed by Ms.DKarthikaRenuka, et.al. [6], for the
classification techniques such as MLP, J48 and Naïve Bayesian, for classifying spam messages
from e-mail using WEKA tool. The dataset gathered from UCI repository had 2788 legitimate
and 1813 spam emails received during a period of several months. Using this dataset as a training
dataset, models are built for classification algorithms. The study reveals that the same classifier
performed dissimilarly when run on the same dataset but using different software tools. Thus,
from all perspectives MLP is top performer in all cases and thus, can be deemed consistent.
Following table summarizes all the previous classification approaches enlisted above and
provides a comparison in terms of % accuracy they have achieved with the application of a
specific feature selection algorithm.
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Table 1. Comparison of previous approaches of spam detection
Reference Classifier Used and features % Feature Acc (%)

Selection
R.Parimala, SVM (100%) - 93

et.al. [1] SVM (16%) CFS 91.44
SVM (70%) Chi 93.00
SVM (70%) IG 93.00
SVM (70%) GR 93.39
SVM (70%) SU 93.33
SVM (70%) oneR 92.65
SVM (70%) Relief 93.15
SVM( 32%) Lda 91.90
SVM (12%) Rpart 90.51
SVM (16%) SVM 89.95
SVM (21%) RF 91.23
SVM (7%) NB 80.00
R. Kishore Kumar, C4.5 Fisher 99.9637
et.al.[2] C-PLS Fisher 99.8976
C-RT Fisher 99.9465
CS-CRT Fisher 99.9465
CS-MC4 Fisher 99.9415
CS-SVC Fisher 99.9685
ID3 Fisher 99.9137
KNN Fisher 99.9391
LDA Fisher 99.8861
LogReg TRIRLS Fisher 99.8552
MLP Fisher 99.9459
Multilogical Logistic Reg Fisher 99.9311
NBC Fisher 99.8865
PLS-DA Fisher 99.8752
PLD-LDA Fisher 99.8757
Rnd Tree Fisher 99.9911
SVM Fisher 99.9070
C4.5 Relief 99.9487
C-PLS Relief 99.8537
C-RT Relief 99.9261
CS-CRT Relief 99.9261
CS-MC4 Relief 99.9324
CS-SVC Relief 99.8794
ID3 Relief 99.895
KNN Relief 99.9176
LDA Relief 99.8481
LogReg TRIRLS Relief 99.8179
MLP Relief 99.9185
Multilogical Logistic Reg Relief 99.8883
NBC Relief 99.8587
PLS-DA Relief 99.8474
PLD-LDA Relief 99.8476
Rnd Tree Relief 99.9676
SVM Relief 99.8639
C4.5 Runs 99.9633
C-PLS Runs 99.9102
C-RT Runs 99.9404
CS-CRT Runs 99.9404
CS-MC4 Runs 99.9615
CS-SVC Runs 99.9233
ID3 Runs 99.9137
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Reference Classifier Used and features % Feature Acc (%)

Selection
R. Kishore Kumar, KNN Runs 99.9404
et.al.[2] LDA Runs 99.8887
MLP Runs 99.9607
LogReg TRIRLS Runs 99.8611
Multilogical Logistic Reg Runs 99.9313
NBC Runs 99.8874
PLS-DA Runs 99.8879
PLD-LDA Runs 99.8879
Rnd Tree Runs 99.9883
SVM Runs 99.9076
C4.5 StepDisc 99.9633
C-PLS StepDisc 99.9081
C-RT StepDisc 99.9341
CS-CRT StepDisc 99.9341
CS-MC4 StepDisc 99.9604
CS-SVC StepDisc 99.9218
ID3 StepDisc 99.9105
KNN StepDisc 99.935
LDA StepDisc 99.8881
LogReg TRIRLS StepDisc 99.8587
MLP StepDisc 99.9481
Multilogical Logistic Reg StepDisc 99.9294
NBC StepDisc 99.8829
PLS-DA StepDisc 99.8826
PLD-LDA StepDisc 99.8829
Rnd Tree StepDisc 99.99
SVM StepDisc 99.905
W. A. Awad, et.al.[3] NBC - 99.46
SVM - 96.9
KNN - 96.2
ANN - 96.83
AIS - 96.23
Rough Sets - 97.42
V.Christina, et.al.[4] NBC - 98.6
J48 - 96.6
MLP - 99.3
RafiqulIslam,et.al [5] NB - 92.3
SMO - 96.4
IB1 - 95.8
DT - 95.9
RF - 96.1
Ms.DKarthikaRenuka, MLP - 93
et.al [6] J48 - 92
NBC - 89
PROPOSED WORK
After a detailed review of the existing techniques used for spam detection, in this
section we are illustrating the methodology and techniques we used for spam mail detection.
Figure 1 shows the process we have used for spam mail identification and how it is
used in conjunction with a machine learning scheme. Feature ranking techniques such as
Chisquare, Information gain, Gain ratio, Symmetrical uncertainty, Relief, OneR and
Correlation are applied to a copy of the training data. After the feature selection subset with
the highest merit is used to reduce the dimensionality of both the original training data and
the testing data. Both reduced datasets may then be passed to a machine learning scheme for
126
training and testing. Results are obtained by using Random Forest and Part classification
techniques.
Figure 1. Stages of Spam Email Classification
In the following subsections we discuss the basic concept related to our work. It
includes a brief background on feature ranking techniques, classification techniques and
results.
Dataset
The dataset used for our experiment is spambase [13]. The last column of
'spambase.data' denotes whether the e-mail was considered spam (1) or not (0). Most of the
attributes indicate the frequency of spam related term occurrences. The first 48 set of
attributes (1–48) give tf-idf (term frequency and inverse document frequency) values for
spam related words, whereas the next 6 attributes (49-54) provide tf-idf values for spam
related terms. The run-length attributes (55-57) measure the length of sequences of
consecutive capital letters, capital_run_length_average, capital_run_length_longest and
capital_run_length_total. Thus, our dataset has in total 57 attributes serving as an input
features for spam detection and the last attribute represents the class (spam/non-spam).
We have also used one public dataset Enron [20]. The “preprocessed” subdirectory contains
the messages in the preprocessed format. Each message is in a separate text file. The body of
an email contains the actual information. This information needs to be extracted before
running a filter process by means of preprocessing. The purpose for preprocessing is to
transform messages in mail into a uniform format that can be understood by the learning
algorithm. Following are the steps involved in preprocessing:
1. Feature extraction (Tokenization): Extracting features
from e-mail in to a vector space.
2.Stemming: Stemming is a process for removing the commoner morphological and in-
flexional endings from words in English.
3.Stop word removal: Removal of non-informative words.
4. Noise removal: Removal of obscure text or symbols from features.
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5. Representation: tf-idf is a statistical measure used to calculate how significant a word is to

a document in a feature corpus. Word frequency is established by term frequency (tf), number
of times the word appears in the message yields the significance of the word to the document.
The term frequency then is multiplied with inverse document frequency (idf) which measures
the frequency of the word occurring in all messages.
Feature Ranking and Subset Selection
From the above defined feature vector of total 58 features, we use feature ranking and
selection algorithms to select the subset of features. We rank the given set of features using
the following distinct approaches.
1.Chisquare
A chi-squared χ 2 hypothesis tests may be performed on contingency tables in order to

decide whether or not effects are present. Effects in a contingency table are defined as
relationships between the row and column variables; that is, are the levels of the row variable
differentially distributed over levels of the column variables. Significance in this hypothesis
test means that interpretation of the cell frequencies is warranted. Non-significance means
that any differences in cell frequencies could be explained by chance. Hypothesis tests on
contingency tables are based on a statistic called Chi-square [8].

χ

Where, O – Observed cell frequency,
E –Expected cell frequency.
2. Information gain
Information Gain is the expected reduction in entropy caused by partitioning the

examples according to a given attribute. Information gain is a symmetrical measure that is,
the amount of information gained about Y after observing X is equal to the amount of
information gained about X after observing Y. The entropy of Y is given by [9]

2

If the observed values of Y in the training data are partitioned according to the values of a
second feature X, and the entropy of Y with respect to the partitions induced by X is less than
the entropy of Y prior to partitioning, then there is a relationship between features Y and X.
Equation gives the entropy of Y after observing X

| 2|

The amount by which the entropy of Y decreases reflects additional information about Y
provided by X and is called the information gain or alternatively, mutual information [9].
Information gain is given by
128

|

|

,
3. Gain ratio
The various selection criteria have been compared empirically in a series of

experiments. When all attributes are binary, the gain ratio criterion has been found to give
considerably smaller decision trees. When the task includes attributes with large numbers of
values, the subset criterion gives smaller decision trees that also have better predictive
performance, but can require much more computation. However, when these many-valued
attributes are augmented by redundant attributes which contain the same information at a
lower level of detail, the gain ratio criterion gives decision trees with the greatest predictive
accuracy. All in all, it suggest that the gain ratio criterion does pick a good attribute for the
root of the tree [12].

,
!

4. Symmetrical uncertainty
Information gain is a symmetrical measure that is, the amount of information gained
about Y after observing X is equal to the amount of information gained about X after
observing Y. Symmetry is a desirable property for a measure of feature-feature
intercorrelation to have. Unfortunately, information gain is biased in favour of features with
more values. Symmetrical uncertainty compensates for information gain’s bias toward
attributes with more values and normalizes its value to the range [0, 1] [9]:

"##$!%& '&$%!! ($)) 2.0 ,

5. Relief
Relief [10] is a feature weighting algorithm that is sensitive to feature interactions.

Relief attempts to approximate the following difference of probabilities for the weight of a
feature X [9]:
- .))$%$! / 0$ ) |$%$1! 1!&$ ) .))$%$! & 11

.))$%$! / 0$ ) |$%$1! 1!&$ ) 1#$ & 11
By removing the context sensitivity provided by the “nearest instance” condition, attributes
are treated as independent of one another;
$ $)2 .))$%$! / 0$ ) |.))$%$! & 11
.))$%$! / 0$ ) |1#$ & 11
which can be reformulated as
′ , ∑ 4 2

$ $)
1 ∑67 4& 2 ∑67 4& 2
129
Where, C is the class variable and
4 2
′ 8 4& 91 4& :; < 4&| 1 4&| =
∑ 4 2
67 67
6. OneR
Like other empirical learning methods, 1R [11] takes as input a set of examples, each
with several attributes and a class. The aim is to infer a rule that predicts the class given the
values of the attributes. The 1R algorithm chooses the most informative single attribute and
bases the rule on this attribute alone. The basic idea is:
For each attribute a, form a rule as follows:

For each value v from the domain of a,
Select the set of instances where a has
value v.
Let c be the most frequent class in that
set.
Add the following clause to the rule for
a:
if a has value v then the class is c
Calculate the classification accuracy of this rule. Use the rule with the highest classification
accuracy. The algorithm assumes that the attributes are discrete. If not, then they must be
discretized.
7. Correlation
Feature selection for classification tasks in machine learning can be accomplished on
the basis of correlation between features, and that such a feature selection procedure can be
beneficial to common machine learning algorithms [9]. Features are relevant if their values
vary systematically with category membership. In other words, a feature is useful if it is
correlated with or predictive of the class; otherwise it is irrelevant. A good feature subset is
one that contains features highly correlated with (predictive of) the class, yet uncorrelated
with (not predictive of) each other. The acceptance of a feature will depend on the extent to
which it predicts classes in areas of the instance space not already predicted by other features.
Correlation based feature selection feature subset evaluation function [9]:
@%BBBB
6A
>?
C@ @ @ 1 %AA
Where,>? - the heuristic “merit” of a feature subset S containing k features, %6A -the mean
feature-class correlation, %AA -the average feature-feature inter-correlation.
130
Feature ranking further help us to-
1. Remove irrelevant features, which might be misleading the classifier decreasing the
classifier interpretability by reducing generalization by increasing over fitting.
2. Remove redundant features, which provide no additional information than the other
set of features, unnecessarily decreasing the efficiency of the classifier.
3. Selecting high rank features, which may not affect much as far as improving precision
and recall is concerned; but reduces time complexity drastically. Selection of such
high rank features reduces the dimensionality feature space of the domain. It speeds
up the classifier there of improving the performance and increasing the
comprehensibility of the classification result.
We have considered 87%, 77% and 70% of the features; wherein there is a performance
improvement in 70% feature consideration.
Classification Methods
Based on the assumption that the given dataset has enough number of the training
instances we have chosen the following two classification algorithms. The algorithms work
well based on the fact that the dataset is of good quality.
1. Random Forest
Random Forests [14] are a combination of tree predictors such that each tree depends on
the values of a random vector sampled independently and with the same distribution for all
trees in the forest. The generalization error for forests converges a.s. to a limit as the number
of trees in the forest becomes large. The generalization error of a forest of tree classifiers
depends on the strength of the individual trees in the forest and the correlation between them.
Each tree is grown as follows:
1. If the number of cases in the training set is N, sample N cases at random - but with
replacement, from the original data. This sample will be the training set for growing
the tree.
2. If there are M input variables, a number m<<M is specified such that at each node, m
variables are selected at random out of the M and the best split on these m is used to
split the node. The value of m is held constant during the forest growing.
3. Each tree is grown to the largest extent possible. There is no pruning.
Random Forest is an ensemble of trees. In our implementation of random forest we have

selected a vector of 4 features (randomly selected), to build each tree in a forest of 10 random
trees. Tree grows to its maximum depth as that argument is set to zero, which indicates
unlimited depth. By using bagging and voting techniques classification is being done. For
example, a sample part of the output of the forest (very small portion of the forest) is as
shown below:
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Total Random forest Trees: 10

Numbers of random features: 4
Out of bag error: 0.1092391304347826
All the trees in the forest:
RandomTree
==========
word_freq_hpl < 0.07
| char_freq_$ < 0.03
| | word_freq_you < 0.12
| | | word_freq_hp < 0.02
| | | | char_freq_! < 0.01
| | | | | word_freq_3d < 9.87
| | | | | | word_freq_000 < 0.08
| | | | | | | char_freq_( < 0.04
| | | | | | | | word_freq_meeting < 0.85
| | | | | | | | | word_freq_remove < 2.27
| | | | | | | | | | word_freq_free < 6.47
| | | | | | | | | | | word_freq_will < 0.17
| | | | | | | | | | | | word_freq_pm < 0.42
| | | | | | | | | | | | | word_freq_all < 0.21
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | word_freq_mail < 2.96
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | word_freq_re < 5.4
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | word_freq_technology < 1.43
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | capital_run_length_total < 18.5
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | word_freq_re < 0.68
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | word_freq_make < 1.39
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | capital_run_length_total < 10.5 : 0 (218/0)
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | capital_run_length_total >= 10.5
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | word_freq_internet < 0.89
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | word_freq_people < 1.47
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | word_freq_data < 3.7
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | word_freq_edu < 2.38
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | char_freq_[ < 0.59
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | char_freq_; < 0.16
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | capital_run_length_total <
11.5
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | word_freq_credit < 9.09 :
0 (1/0)
This is the case when 100% features have selected for training model, accordingly the root
node of each tree changes.
2. Partial Decision Trees
Rule learners are prominent representatives of supervised machine learning

approaches. Basically, this type of learner tries to induce a set of rules for a collection of
training instances. These rules are then applied on the test instances for classification
132
purposes. Two well-known members of the family of rule-learners are C4.5 and RIPPER.
C4.5 [16], for instance, generates an unpruned decision tree and transforms this tree into a set
of rules. For each path from the root node to a leaf a rule is generated. Then, each rule is
simplified separately followed by a rule-ranking strategy. Finally, the algorithm deletes rules
from the rule set as long as the rule set’s error rate on the training instances decreases.
RIPPER [17] implements a divide and conquer strategy to rule induction. Only one rule is
generated at a time and the instances from a training set covered by this rule are removed. It
iteratively derives new rules for the remaining instances of the training set.
PART (Partial Decision Trees) adopts the divide-and-conquer strategy of RIPPER
[17] and combines it with the decision tree approach of C4.5 [16]. PART generates a set of
rules according to the divide-and-conquer strategy, removes all instances from the training
collection that are covered by this rule and proceeds recursively until no instance remains. To
generate a single rule, PART builds a partial decision tree for the current set of instances and
chooses the leaf with the largest coverage as the new rule. For example, following is the way
of rule formation in our implementation of PART and some of the rules are as shown below:
Rule 1:
word_freq_remove> 0.0 AND
char_freq_! > 0.049 AND
word_freq_edu<= 0.06: 1 (Instances: 490 and Incorrect: 7)
Now, after Rule1 the next set of rules are formed excluding 490 instances from the 4601 total
instances of spambase.
Rule 2:
char_freq_$ > 0.058 AND
word_freq_hp<= 0.4 AND
capital_run_length_longest> 9.0 AND
word_freq_1999 <= 0.0 AND
word_freq_edu<= 0.08 AND
char_freq_! > 0.107: 1 (Instances: 334 and Incorrect: 2)
Next set of rules is formed on remaining 3777 instnaces of spambase.

Rule 3:
word_freq_money<= 0.03 AND
word_freq_000 <= 0.25 AND
word_freq_remove<= 0.26 AND
word_freq_free<= 0.19 AND
word_freq_font<= 0.12 AND
char_freq_! <= 0.391 AND
char_freq_$ <= 0.172 AND
word_freq_george> 0.0: 0 (Instances: 553 and Incorrect: 0)
Total 42 rules are formulated when training.
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Results
Spambase Results
The dataset spambase was taken from UCI machine learning repository [13].
Spambase dataset contains 4601 instances and 58 attributes. 1 - 57 continuous attributes and
1 nominal class label. The email spam classification has been implemented in Eclipse.
Eclipse considered by many to be the best Java development tool available. Feature ranking
and feature selection is done by using the methods such as Chi-square, Information gain,
Gain ratio, Relief, OneR, Correlation as a preprocessing step so as to select feature subset for
building the learning model.
Classification algorithms are from decision tree family, viz, Random Forest and
Partial Decision Trees. Random forest is an effective tool in prediction. Because of the law of
large numbers they do not over fit. Random inputs and random features produce good results
in classification-less so in regression. For the larger data sets, it seems that significantly lower
error rates are possible [14]. Feature space can be reduced by the magnitude of 10 while
achieving similar classification results. For example, it takes about 2,000 χ 2 features to
achieve similar accuracies as those obtained with 149 PART features [15].
As a part of our implementation, we have divided the dataset into two parts. 80% of
the dataset is used for training purpose and 20% for the testing purpose. After preprocessing
step top 87%, 77% and 70% features are considered while building training model and testing
because there is a significant performance improvement. Prediction accuracy, correctly
classified instances, incorrectly classified instances, confusion matrix and time complexity
are used as performance measures of the system.
More than 99% prediction accuracy is achieved by Random forest with all the seven
feature selection methods in consideration; whereas 97% prediction accuracy is achieved by
PART with almost all the seven feature selection methods while training the model. Training
and testing results, when 100% features have considered are given in Table 2.
Table 2. Results of 100% feature selection
Classifier Training Testing Time

(ms)
Random 99.918 94.354 1540

Forest
PART 96.416 92.291 4938
Both training results and testing results on spambase dataset after feature ranking and
subset selection are shown in the Table 3 and Table 4.
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Table 3. Training Results

FS FS RF Acc (%) Time Part Acc (%) Time
(%) (ms) (ms )
87% Chi 99.891 1349 98.234 3797

Infogain 99.837 1330 98.505 3080
Gainratio 99.918 1386 98.315 3611
Relief 99.891 1397 96.63 3467
SU 99.918 1367 98.505 3124
OneR 99.918 1470 96.902 4727
Corr 99.728 1153 95.027 847
77% Chi 99.918 1373 97.283 2701
Infogain 99.891 1498 97.147 3131

Gainratio 99.918 1604 97.006 4007
Relief 99.864 1367 97.799 3829
SU 99.891 1294 97.147 2867
OneR 99.891 1406 94.973 3469
Corr 99.728 1145 95.027 835
70% Chi 99.891 1282 97.092 2437

Infogain 99.918 1314 97.092 2409
Gainratio 99.864 1383 96.821 2642
Relief 99.81 1428 96.658 2855
SU 99.918 1276 97.092 2394
OneR 99.918 1442 95.245 2528
Corr 99.728 1152 95.027 845
Table 4. Testing Results

FS (%) FS RF Acc (%) Part Acc (%)
87% Chi 94.788 92.291

Infogain 94.137 93.16
Gainratio 93.594 94.137
Relief 95.114 93.185
SU 93.16 93.16
OneR 92.834 89.902
Corr 93.051 92.942
77% Chi 93.485 92.508

Infogain 94.028 93.051
Gainratio 94.245 92.291
Relief 93.485 92.617
SU 94.028 93.051
OneR 93.16 91.531
Corr 93.051 92.942
5
70% Chi 94.245 93.268
Infogain 94.68 93.268
Gainratio 94.028 94.463
Relief 93.811 91.965
SU 94.137 93.268
OneR 93.16 89.794
Corr 93.051 92.942
135
From the results above, it can be observed that for Random Forest, after using 70% of
the feature set extracted using Infogain, Symmetrical Uncertainty and OneR feature selection
algorithms the training accuracy remained the same (99.918%) whereas the computation time
reduced by 20% (from 1540ms – to 1276ms). This shows that the remaining 30% features
were not contributing towards the classification.
Also it can be observed that for PART, after using 70% of the feature set extracted
using Chisquare, Infogain and Symmetrical Uncertainty feature selection algorithms the
training accuracy is increased by1.521% and computation time is reduced by 52% (from
4938 ms – to 2409ms). This shows that not only the remaining 30% features were redundant
but also they were misleading the classification.
Enron Results
More than 96% prediction accuracy is achieved by Random forest with all the seven
feature selection methods in consideration; whereas more than 95% prediction accuracy is
achieved by PART with almost all the seven feature selection methods while training the
model. Training and testing results, when 100% features have considered are given in Table
5.
Table 5. Results of 100% feature selection
Classifier Training Testing Time

(ms)
Random 96.181 93.623 9466
Forest
PART 95.093 91.787 18558
Both training and testing results after feature ranking and subset selection are shown
in the Table 6 and Table 7.
Table 6. Training Results

FS FS RF Acc Time Part Acc Time
(%) (%) (ms) (%) (ms )
87% Chi 96.012 4210 94.634 5961

Infogain 96.012 4106 94.634 5839
Gainratio 96.012 4584 94.634 5791
Relief 96.012 4070 94.634 5806
SU 96.012 4170 94.634 5854
OneR 96.012 4085 94.634 5856
Corr 96.012 4147 94.634 5821
136
Table 7. Testing Results

FS (%) FS RF Acc Part Acc
(%) (%)
87% Chi 93.43 90.725

Infogain 93.43 90.725
Gainratio 93.43 90.725
Relief 93.43 90.725
SU 93.43 90.725
OneR 93.43 90.725
Corr 93.43 90.725
From the results above, it can be observed that for Random Forest, after using 87% of
the feature set extracted the training accuracy is (96.012%) whereas the computation time
reduced by 51.574% (from 9466ms – to 4584ms). This shows that the remaining 13%
features were not contributing towards the classification.
Also, it can be observed that for Part, after using 87%, 77% of the feature set
extracted the training accuracy is increased. There is a significant improvement in 87%
feature selection by 1% and computation time is reduced by 67.879% (from 18558 ms – to
5961ms). This shows that not only the remaining 30% features were redundant but also they
were misleading the classification.
Gmail Dataset Test Results
Further, we have tested our Enron model on the dataset created by using emails we
have received in our Gmail accounts during the period of last 3 months. The results are
shown in the Table 8. In this, experiment we test dataset is completely non-overlapping with
the training set allowing us to truly evaluate the performance of our system.
Table 8. Personal Email Dataset Testing Results
Classifier Testing Accuracy

(%)
Random Forest 96
PART 97.33
CONCLUSION
In this paper we have studied previous approaches of spam email detection using
machine learning methodologies. We have compared and evaluated the approaches based on
the factors such as dataset used; features extracted, ranked and selected; feature selection
algorithms used and the results received in terms of accuracy (precision, recall and error rate)
and performance (time required).
137
The datasets available for spam detection are large in number and for such larger
datasets Random Forest and Part tend to produce better results with lower error rates and
higher precision. So, we used these two classifiers to classify spam email detection. For
spambase dataset, we acquired the best percentage accuracy of 99.918% with Random Forest
which is 9% better than previous spambase approaches and 96.416% with Part. For Enron
dataset, we acquired the best percentage accuracy of 96.181% with Random Forest and
95.093% with Part. Enron dataset is used by [21] in an unsupervised spam learning and
detection scheme. Above all, for the dataset created by using our personal emails the
percentage accuracy of 96% is achieved with Random Forest and 97.33% with Part. The
feature selection algorithms used also contributed to achieve better accuracy with lower time
complexity due to dimensionality reduction. For Random Forest, after using 70% of the
feature set extracted, for spambase data set, the training accuracy remained the same
(99.918%) whereas the computation time reduced by 20% (from 1540ms – to 1276ms),
whereas for PART, the training accuracy is increased by 1.521% and computation time is
reduced by 52% (from 4938 ms – to 2409ms).
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139

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ISSN 0976 – 6367(Print)

EFFICIENT SPAM CLASSIFICATION BY APPROPRIATE FEATURE

Prajakta Ozarkar, Dr. Manasi Patwardhan

Spam is a key problem in electronic communication, including large-scale email

Table 1. Comparison of previous approaches of spam detection

Reference Classifier Used and features % Feature Acc (%)

R.Parimala, SVM (100%) - 93

Reference Classifier Used and features % Feature Acc (%)

Figure 1. Stages of Spam Email Classification

5. Representation: tf-idf is a statistical measure used to calculate how significant a word is to

Feature Ranking and Subset Selection

A chi-squared χ 2 hypothesis tests may be performed on contingency tables in order to

Information Gain is the expected reduction in entropy caused by partitioning the

The various selection criteria have been compared empirically in a series of

Relief [10] is a feature weighting algorithm that is sensitive to feature interactions.

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Where, C is the class variable and

For each attribute a, form a rule as follows:

Feature ranking further help us to-

Random Forest is an ensemble of trees. In our implementation of random forest we have

Total Random forest Trees: 10

2. Partial Decision Trees

Rule learners are prominent representatives of supervised machine learning

Next set of rules is formed on remaining 3777 instnaces of spambase.

Total 42 rules are formulated when training.

Table 2. Results of 100% feature selection

Classifier Training Testing Time

Random 99.918 94.354 1540

Table 3. Training Results

87% Chi 99.891 1349 98.234 3797

77% Chi 99.918 1373 97.283 2701

Infogain 99.891 1498 97.147 3131

70% Chi 99.891 1282 97.092 2437

Table 4. Testing Results

87% Chi 94.788 92.291

77% Chi 93.485 92.508

Table 5. Results of 100% feature selection

Classifier Training Testing Time

Table 6. Training Results

87% Chi 96.012 4210 94.634 5961

Table 7. Testing Results

87% Chi 93.43 90.725

Gmail Dataset Test Results

Table 8. Personal Email Dataset Testing Results

Classifier Testing Accuracy

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